McDonald’s stops using ‘pink slime’ in meat — did the Brits win?

McDonald’s recently confirmed it will no long use scrap meat treated with ammonium hydroxide to make hamburgers and chicken sandwiches, and all of the United Kingdom is claiming victory.

OK, maybe not all of the UK — just the Daily Mail and so-called Naked Chef Jamie Oliver.

“After years of trying to break America, Jamie Oliver has finally made his mark by persuading one of the biggest U.S fast food chains in the world to change their burger recipe,” the Daily Mail reported this week.

Oliver brought attention to McDonald’s treated meat on this TV show “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.” Since then, a photo of pink goo has been making the rounds on social networking sites. The goo appears to be McDonald’s ice cream — but it’s later revealed to be processed meat.

But McDonald’s says their decision to stop using treated meat has nothing to do with Oliver. The company released this statement:

At the beginning of 2011, we made a decision to discontinue the use of ammonia-treated beef in our hamburgers. This product has been out of our supply chain since August of last year. This decision was a result of our efforts to align our global standards for how we source beef around the world.

Here’s what Oliver said on his show, when he first detailed the USDA-approved process of making ground beef.

Besides being used as a household cleaner and in fertilizers, the compound releases flammable vapors, and with the addition of certain acids, it can be turned into ammonium nitrate, a common component in homemade bombs. It’s also widely used in the food industry as an anti-microbial agent in meats and as a leavener in bread and cake products. It’s regulated by the U.S. Agriculture Department, which classifies it as “generally recognized as safe.”